What is the alt-left?

American politics used to divide itself into two generally opposing streams: Liberals leaned left. Conservatives leaned right.

Then came the era of Donald Trump, and the political landscape shifted from a two-lane highway to a train wreck. "Right" was no longer adequate to include the fringe coalition of disaffected citizens whose views _ anti-establishment, anti-diversity, anti-feminist, anti-Semitic, anti-egalitarian, anti-immigrant _ were united by nothing so much as their communal anger.

Fast-forward to this week's events in Charlottesville, Va., when self-described "alt-right" protesters bearing torches and shouting racist slogans paraded through town, confronting an organized group of anti-racist counter-protesters and sparking a raucous melee that left one person dead and many others injured.

Blame for the violence, President Donald Trump said later, lay with "both sides" _